EYEHATEGOD - 09.11.2017 - Ziggy's Music Box, Chattanooga, TN

Jimmy left the stage to puke in a back room between songs, at which point the other EHG members shared a collective glance and a shrug, then launched into an Outlaw Order song off their Legalize Crime EP, ("Byproduct of a Wrecked Society," if I remember correctly).

I saw them in December of 2010, but I barely remember it. It was right before I cut booze out of my diet, which means I was so blacked out that I produced gravitational lensing in the couch corner of The Earl in Atlanta. (I had forgotten that I'd seen them a second time until a few days ago.)

Fun fact: These three people were born on September 11th:

My brother (turned 27, was at show)

Brian Patton (EHG guitarist, age unknown, was at show)

Wes Reynolds (39 (I guess), was not at show. Old bassist for Hellstomper, also the dude who turned me on to EHG when I was 15, a mitzvah that probably contributed to my decision to make him the best man at my first wedding.)

('nother factoid: my brother was best man at my second wedding. So both of my best men were born on 9/11. Maybe if I get around to a round three, I'll call up Brian Patton and ask him. Never met him, nor spoken to him, so I expect to be shot down. Not planning on a third marriage, so it's okay.))

Hellstomper - 2000 - Recording session for Haulin' Ass

I was 15 when I took these for a high school photography class (my first, I think). They made it into the 2002 EP, Hellbent for Dixie, I believe (maybe only the CD release, I can't remember). I was friends with the Brothers Reynolds (Wes-bass, Matt-drums), having worked with them at my uncle's computer company the previous summer. Wes turned me on to some seminal shit. Eyehategod, GG Allin, Danzig, Danzig-era Misfits, The Damned, Antiseen, etc.

I was home for spring break in my senior year at Bard College. I was wrapping up my senior photo project by then, so I just went around my hometown photographing whatever so I could burn through all the medium format film I bought for my project. I was kinda burned out on photography as well, but this gave me an opportunity not to care and just have fun. It might've been the last show I photographed for years, as I barely picked up my camera after studying photography intensely for several years in a row.

I'm kinda pissed at myself for not photographing all the amazing bands I saw in the years in which my passion for photography went dormant, but I had an opportunity to let loose and not care about breaking cameras in the crowd.

During my four years in college, I developed a belief that I was cursed w/r/t medium format cameras.

My Mamiya 645AF that I bought in high school went on the fritz and never recovered, baffling the scientific minds of all the camera technicians I took it to.

[When it mysteriously started working again after sitting in a closet for the better part of a year, my then-girlfriend (being a bit of a prankster) decided to pull her ongoing joke where she would start driving her giant black-with-pink-flames-on-the-sides pickup truck away before her passenger could fully get in the door. I was wise to this stunt, so I jumped in and sat down. I'd forgotten that I had left my recently Lazarus-ed camera in the passenger seat, so I assed it. It stopped working.

(Despite it not working for almost fifteen years, I can't bring myself to get rid of it. I can actually see it from where I'm sitting right now.)

The Hasselblad that I got in 2005 for a personal celebration of Lee Friedlander winning the Hasselblad Prize. I decided to try to get the model that they took to the moon, but I settled for a cheap 500C when I saw one for the kind of price that could haunt you for years if you passed it up.

Fell out of same then-girlfriend's pink-flamed truck soon after I got it. Stopped working the next day when I took it to NYC. Only camera I brought, didn't have a strap so I had to palm this non-functional Hasselblad cube all day, didn't even get one roll through it.

A champagne-colored Mamiya 7II that I got during my senior year. Took it with me to visit a friend's house. Friend's dog (who was Mexican street dog that was smuggled in to the U.S. and brought to Upstate NY) was normally very nice, but had that latin fire in her heart, so she was a little unpredictable. The one time she decided to attack me, I had shouldered the Mamiya, and it slipped off. Cracked the filter, and dented it in such a way that it couldn't be removed from the lens. It stayed that way for years, until it mysteriously disappeared during my first marriage. (Ex-wife didn't take it, but I thought it might have gotten lost in the move. I think someone stole it. Or I drunkenly gave it to someone and I either was blacked out or I buried the memory out of shame and disgust with myself. I think someone took it from a shelf at a party, most likely.)

I'm proud to say the curse has lifted for the time being. No more girlfriends with trucks avec/sans pink flames on the sides. No more Mexican street dogs. No more booze, parties, or late, forgotten nights.